A LONG-OVERDUE CONNECTION

While preparing dinner, I listened to a YouTube piece on forgotten one-hit wonders of 1977, and for the first time since the late 1970's I heard a snippet of the song "Heaven on the 7th Floor" by Paul Nicholas, a hit that was never a favorite of mine, but it was certainly memorable. When Nicholas's name was mentioned, it rang a bell in my memory, and upon mulling it over I went "Nooooo..." and ran to the internet to check on what was jogging my brain. 

The films of director Ken Russell are among my favorites for their sheer madness, and my search revealed that my memory of Nicholas's name was correct. He has prominent roles in two of my favorite Russell films, specifically TOMMY and LISZTOMANIA (both 1975). I saw TOMMY in during its theatrical run with my parents — notably, TOMMY was the final film we saw together as a family unit — but that was two years before "Heaven on the 7th Floor," and I did not see LISZTOMANIA until I obtained a VHS copy during the late 1980's, and when viewing both of those for the first time, I did not not any of the actors' names, as situation that changed once I had both films on home video and went on to study them in depth over the next three decades.

 

Paul Nicolas has a brief-but-unforgettable role in TOMMY as the gleefully sadistic Cousin Kevin, complete with his own musical number that drags the audience along as Kevin spends a day torturing the deaf/dumb/blind titular character. 

 

Tormenting Roger Daltrey in TOMMY (1975).

 

But my favorite of his Russell performances is in LISZTOMANIA, where he has an ogoing and significant part throughout the film as composer/German nationalist Richard Wagner. It's an incredibly loopy and cartoonish portrayal that finds Wagner undergoing numerous visual changes to indicate his growing fascistic nationalism, among which are him becoming a vampire to leech off of composer Franz Liszt's music, only to be reborn in the 20th Century as a literal chimera of Frankenstein's monster and Adolph Hitler. 

 

 As Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler in LISZTOMANIA (1975).

 

The insane sight of a Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler leading female children clad in cheesy Superman costumes (symbolizing the indoctrination of the German youth into the ideology of the Aryan superman) as he stiffly marches through a town, blasting fleeing orthodox Jews with an electric guitar machine gun made my jaw hit the floor when I first saw the film, and that image's audacity and sheer lunacy cracks me up to this day.

 

So, yeah, that was the guy who sang "Heaven on the 7th Floor."

 

LISZTOMANIA AT LINCOLN CENTER

Yer Bunche, in front of an original one-sheet for Ken Russell's infamous THE DEVILS (1971).

I just got back from what can only be considered a perfect day (okay, the heat and humidity sucked, but you know what I mean) and I am in one hell of a good mood. I hit my favorite comics shop — where I saw that the issue of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND containing my PREDATOR retrospective has come out; it's the July issue, so get yours today! — had dinner and drinks with the coolest woman I've been involved with since maybe ever (more on her as things develop), and then she and I took our buzzed asses over to Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater for a rare screening of director Ken Russell's balls-out insane masterpiece, LISZTOMANIA (1975) as part of a retrospective called "Russellmania."

My love of both Russell and LISZTOMANIA have been previously discussed, so I'll leave that out. Instead I would like to mention how cool it was to finally see the film projected after having seen it on VHS and a DVD-rom burned from the VHS (the film is not available on DVD in the U.S.) many times over the past twenty-five years, and also recently on the British Region 2 disc (get an all-regions player; you won't regret it!). Russell's "BIOGRAPHY on peyote" take on the life of classical composer Franz Liszt is a sumptuous visual madhouse that fairly explodes across the screen and the only way to truly appreciate its art direction and detail-crammed frames is to see it projected. Seriously, I could not have been happier to experience it all proper (as A CLOCKWORK ORANGE's Alex would no doubt say) and I was glad to be able to share the film with my new lady-friend, who had never seen it and came out of the movie with a look on her face like one would expect if she's been smacked in the head with a shovel. That's exactly how I felt when I first saw it back in 1985 while high and drunk out of my skull on bad ditch-weed and cheap white wine, and when I sobered up I watched it again and found that seen either sober or completely ripped to the tits, the effect was much the same. LISZTOMANIA is without question Ken Russell's most utterly bonkers major work — his most bonkers minor work would certainly be THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER — and one's enjoyment of its charms are contingent upon how much over-the-top shamelessly blatant "symbolism" the individual viewer can stomach, plus to say nothing of its heavy lashings of bad taste and offensiveness. That kind of stuff is right up my alley, so I guess my enjoyment of it was a given, but when I showed LISZTOMANIA to a group of friends in Westport over two decades ago, all of them practically turned on me and burned me at the stake in sheer outrage and dislike over the film, so keep that in mind before inflicting it on your pals.

When my lovely date and I entered the theater's lobby, I immediately spotted Ken Russell himself, seated on a chair and resting on his cane. My heart leaped into my mouth and I went over to him, speaking in a clam and quiet register so as not to disturb the frail post-stroke eighty-three-year-old auteur. I told him of my admiration for his work and the sheer elephant-balls he had for putting it onscreen, and he graciously allowed me to get a photo with him.

Fuck George Lucas: I got to meet Ken motherfucking Russell!!!

The audience seemed rather sedate during most of the film, but that's probably due to the fact that LISZTOMANIA is a film that only well-seasoned LISZTOMANIA fans were likely to venture forth to see on the big screen, and that theory was kind of proven during the after-movie Q&A session, in which the reverent audience asked mostly very intelligent questions that proved their familiarity with the material. My favorite moment was when the son of Holocaust survivors commended and thanked Russell for "having the balls" to depict the horrors of the rise of Nazism in his signature satirical fashion, a sentiment I share because I remember nearly shitting myself from the sheer shock of seeing the film's Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler for the first time, an image I simply could not believe anyone could be mad enough to have come up with it.

No, you are not going insane: It's Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler! (Double-click on it to see it large.)

I myself did not ask a question, but instead I told Mr. Russell how at the age of ten I dragged my bewildered parents to see TOMMY when it was released, an experience that made me a Russell fan for life, and I went on to thank him for making some of the most visually and intellectually challenging films ever made, a statement I made on behalf of all in attendance. That was met with a round of applause, and a very pleased Mr. Russell beamed as he offered his thanks to me. I felt like a kid who'd just been kissed by the cute girl next door, and my heart soared.

When the audience finally made its way out, I hung around and chatted with a couple of fellow film-minded friends who happened to also be there (including my old pal Scooter, who filmed the Q & A for posterity) and Mr. Russell was kind enough to autograph my copy of PHALLIC FRENZY, an excellent chronicle of the man's chequered career.

The simple fact of the matter is that Ken Russell is most likely not long for this world, and meeting him and getting to tell him to his face how much his films mean to me before he leaves us is one of the top moments of my life. Along with John Waters, Ken Russell is my favorite "filth elder" (as John Waters describes himself) and there will never be another like him.

SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM KEN RUSSELL'S LISZTOMANIA (1975)

After recently reading a biography and overview of the works of British director Ken Russell , I was consumed with a longing to once more sit through my favorite of his loony filmic catalogue, the much-maligned LISZTOMANIA (1975), but after some research I found out that it's not available on DVD in the States. Luckily for me I know of a terrific source for "gray market" DVDs, and they had the film, albeit a transfer from a pan-and-scan VHS tape, so I watched it again and laughed my ass off with — and at — its glorious and schoolboy-vulgar excesses.

Playing fast and loose with the life of classical composer Franz Liszt, LISZTOMANIA is a cornucopia of visual insanity and extremely questionable taste featuring a shitload of stuff that will either offend or amuse the moviegoer. I mean, how can you not love something as ludicrous as Ringo Starr playing the Pope?

Or how about Yes keyboardist (and the film's scorer) Rick Wakeman as Wagner's Sigfried in a Marvel Comics Thor getup?

And, speaking of things Wagnerian, how about the buck-nekkid Rhine Maidens worshipping Das Rheingold that happens to looked like a huge, gold-tipped dick?

That's pretty good, but LISZTOMANIA is infamous for a much more outrageous bit of phallic folderol.

During the course of the story, Franz Liszt — played by the donkey-faced frontman for the Who, Roger Daltrey — symbolically sacrifices his womanizing ways for the patronage of Princess Carolyn (Sarah Kesselman). The princess greets him in a room supported by gilded dick-pillars,

and once he agrees to the bargain things go balls-out Russellian and in no time Liszt, in a dress no less, gets sucked up the princess' vagina by wind-tunnel-velocity gusts.


Once inside this titanic pussy, Liszt is assaulted by a chorus line of former lovers, each decked out in goofy burlesque costumes.

The girls tear and claw at Liszt, who whips a harp from out of nowhere and goes into his "Orpheus" schtick, a move that soothes their savage breasts and inspires them to summon out his trouser snake with a sweet siren's song. Their lilting calls yield totally unexpected results as Liszt's member expands and expands,


finally ending up at a length of about ten feet.

As rinky-dinky "pee-anny" music blares on the soundtrack, Liszt cackles like a fucking madman and proudly slaps his monstrous bacon bazooka in time to the music, occasionally treating the stunned audience to the old "fist-up" erection gesture.

He then kindly gives the ladies a ride on the mighty baloney pony,

after which the choreography changes gears and turns into a phallocentric Busby Berkely number wherein Liszt bobs his pecker up and down between the legs of his spread-eagled harem,

before obligingly letting the women dance a merry maypole around his engorged man-root.

But all good things must eventually come to an end, and the girls use the maypole ribbons to drag a loudly-protesting Liszt to a guillotine wherein his kielbasa will be sacrificed, the pillory through which his behemoth boner will be thrust framed by the splayed thighs of a now demonic and bat-winged Princess Carolyn (I particularly like the inverted crucifix pasted to her crotch).

It's a pretty delirious sequence, but it pales in comparison to the film's finale.

By the time the film's nearly over, all sorts of crazy shit has happened, but of greatest importance to the "plot" is how the stylistic influences vampirized from Liszt by Richard Wagner lead to the creation of Nazism, personified by a risen-from-the-grave Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler who not only looks ridiculous but also packs a combination machine gun/electric guitar.

No, you are not going insane: It's Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler!

So as Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler rampages through the streets of Germany,

aided by apple-cheeked Aryan youth in Superman costumes while he blows away klesmer-music-accompanied Jews, Liszt is in heaven, residing in a huge pipe organ with all of the significant women from his earthly existence, even his daughter, Cosima, who was depicted as killing him with a voodoo doll (don't ask).

After Liszt and the ladies play a soothing classical number, their moment of peace is interrupted by all of them noticing Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler's heinous deeds. Liszt figures it's up to him and the ladies to fly to Earth and kick Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler's ass, so we then find out that their pipe organ-cum-love-shack is actually a spaceship with dime-store angel wings,

which Liszt swiftly pilots to a ravaged Germany.

Once there, he sends the ship into a nosedive,

and blows up Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler with rainbow-colored/psychedelic laser beams. Once the day is saved, Liszt pilots his ship into deep space, toward Heaven or who the fuck knows where, or for what purpose. THE END.

Sure there are some slow-moving moments in the flick — it can't all be gigantic cocks, Nazi vampires, Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitlers, and naked chicks with big boobs...or can it? — but now don't you wanna see LISZTOMANIA for yourself? It's not for all tastes, but how can you not give it up for the sheer, glorious insanity that is Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler? I couldn't have come up with that one even if I were savagely dosed-up on tequila and cheap Mexican cough syrup, and that's saying something!

TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!

THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER (2002)

A while back, when I started reading a biography and overview of the works of British director Ken Russell, I mentioned the book to my brother-in-all-but-genetics, Chris G, saying it was fun to read a book that so lovingly chronicled my favorite behind-the-camera lunatic. Chris replied with, "Yeah, but you obviously haven't seen THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER!" When I asked him if he meant Edgar Allan Poe's THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER and he emphatically answered with, "No, you heard me the first time. THE FALL OF THE 'LOUSE' OF USHER. I'm not a fuckin' idiot, ya know!"

Chris explained to me that it was a fairly recent effort by the mad visionary who gave us legitimate cinematic classics like WOMEN IN LOVE (1969) and THE DEVILS (1971), and that it was shot entirely on a handheld camcorder. He then went off on one of his signature film tirades, foaming at the mouth over how it was one of "the worst pieces of shit" that he'd ever seen, and let me tell you that there's no one more passionate and opinionated about the arts than the Italians, and Chris' irate Goombah-ness has seldom been brought to fore like it had for his anti-LOUSE OF USHER diatribe. Thus forewarned I was intrigued, and when Chris came down to visit this past Saturday night he brought me a copy of THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER so I could judge for myself.

Now, I'm a self-confessed Ken Russell fan, but even I don't like all of his movies, reserving special disdain for the vastly overrated and pretentious GOTHIC, so I was curious to see if THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER could possibly be any worse than that odious arthouse bore. Now that I've seen THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER for myself I can honestly say the following things about it:

1. THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER is without question the worst film Ken Russell has ever made, and may just be the worst film ever perpetrated by a former A-list talent.

2. Cursing, gore and titties aside, this film can be counted as Russell's answer to Ed Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) thanks to its nearly total lack of anything even resembling a budget, a cast of people more obscure than the night staff at a Piggly Wiggly in Oakwood, Georgia, and ludicrous attempts at special effects that wouldn't pass muster on the cheapest of Public Access offerings.

3. Russell has long been on the cusp of being considered a genius or a madman, and with this film my opinion is swayed to the latter school of thought. I am firmly convinced that Ken Russell is balls-out, barking mad.

4. I fucking love this movie and intend to torture as many innocent people with it as I possibly can.

If you regularly read my ramblings on film you know that I love crazy shit that brings your brain to a complete, confused halt and makes you ask, "What the fuck?!!?" about the entire film, so, truly terrible though it is, how could I not love THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER? It was shot by an octogenarian who was not too far off from a stroke, bore a no-name pack of actors that included his groupie wife, was filmed in and around his soon-to-collapse house in the British countryside, and is loaded from toes to tits with imagery that could only have come from the lysergic imagination of Ken Russell, only now his vision was completely and totally free from the interfering claws of a studio and therefore allowed to run utterly unchecked with its dick in its hand and a bizarre song in its heart, so what's not to love?

One of the things I loved about going to an art college was getting to see some of the student movies that came out of the film department, many of which were unintentionally overblown and pretentious, and LOUSE reeks of that aesthetic, only as foisted upon an unsuspecting public by a total lunatic. I mean, just look at this composition and tell me it doesn't look like something out of a high-minded — in both senses of the term — student film:

By now you're probably wondering exactly what the fuck this whole mess is about, and as near as I can tell you it's a fusion of multiple Poe stories and German expressionist classic THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920 ), in which Roddy Usher, a pop star weirdo/bastard-son-of-the-Joker lookalike,

gets sent to a mental institution after being busted for the murder of his wife, Annabelle Lee. From that small oasis of identifiable plot the viewer is dumped into a plotless, structureless morass of torture, rock music, feeble attempts at rap, incomprehensible religious symbolism with topless nuns tormenting some naked chick with butcher knives,

the hero being threatened with castration by a pasty-white nurse, a spirited fuck session between a blowup sex doll and an inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rex that for the life of me I can't quite figure out,

the mad Dr. Calihari — played appropriately enough by Russell himself, looking and acting totally out of it on booze and/or drugs —

and even a gypsy-conducted séance that features a mummy played by a blonde British chick who, though wrapped from head to toe in drugstore bandages, delivers her lines in a minstrel show "now lookee hyear" voice. During the séance the minstrel mummy dons the mask of Egyptian god Osiris and summons his cock to figure out just what the hell is going on — no, I am not making up a single word of this — said cock being represented by a rainbow-colored Slinky attached to some sort of balloon.

And it somehow only gets crazier from there.

THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER is an eighty-two minute endurance test best recommended for Russell hardcores only, and even maybe not for them. But if you're willing to kick your gray matter into the nearest garbage disposal and check out a relentless assault of truly fucked-up visuals, then look no further than this mind-warping volley of utter madness from a creator who looks like he's going to go out fighting. Exactly what it is he's fighting for or against is open to debate, but he's going out fighting nonetheless, and for that I salute the crazy bastard.

Oh, and I have no fucking clue what the title means.

TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!